Essays

The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and they never see it the same way. The first great event, or "Man in the News," was Adam, and the accounts of his creation have been the source of controversy ever since. In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.

"Communist China"-how far Communist? How far Chinese? And what is the difference anyway? How are we to evaluate the impact that decades of war and violence and revolutionary zeal have had upon the China of today? Do Peking's leaders use the terminology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but express sentiments inherited from the Middle Kingdom? Are they unconsciously in the grip of their past, even when most explicitly condemning it? Certainly there is a resonance between China today and earlier periods. But how great is the actual continuity?

Nato's "disarray" has been made into a crisis by President de Gaulle's decision to withdraw French forces and facilities from the integrated structure of the Alliance. For the other NATO powers, and for the United States, this has provided a shock, but-in some ways-a salutary one. The fundamental issues of Europe's future, of Soviet-Western relations and of American policy are now more likely to be addressed. Before the French action these issues would likely have been evaded. Now there still is time to think relatively slowly and carefully about the objectives of the European-American alliance and of the United States itself in Europe's affairs.

We still have much to do to adapt our arrangements for administering foreign aid to the fact that a successful aid program must be a process of partnership. Foreign aid is not something a donor does for or to a recipient; it is something to be done with a recipient. This is the reason for the growing emphasis on self-help by aid recipients. There is by now a strong consensus-although far from complete unanimity-that foreign aid in all its forms will produce maximum results only in so far as it is related to maximum self-help. This is the opinion of leading public officials and development scholars in developing countries as well as in advanced countries.

Our foreign policies are often much more closely related to our domestic policies than we realize-and not alone through the political struggles over appropriations, or even over Congressional approval of international agreements. Indeed, our foreign policies can come so sharply into conflict with our domestic policies that, unless this conflict is both understood and resolved by governmental leaders, domestic pressures can completely undermine and even nullify our foreign programs.

The published figures of the new Soviet Five Year Plan attracted wide attention in the world press. This is understandable. Implementation of the plan will result in an increase in Soviet economic and military might and will provide a base for the extension of Soviet political and economic influence. Although the new plan has not been finally adopted-it is scheduled to be approved later by the Supreme Soviet-one may assume that in all important respects the plan is set.

What is happening in the political and economic arena in Jugoslavia today should not be haughtily dismissed as the result of disruptive ideological disagreement among self-righteous Marxist factions. Nor is it a reflection of the evil influence of foreign propaganda, Communist or anti-Communist. Nor has it grown out of mischievous activity of reactionary forces eager to achieve the restoration of the old régime.

The United Nations "development decade" will go down in history not as a period of spectacular economic growth but as one of sluggish and laggard progress, marred by socio-economic chaos, political upheavals, coups d'états and mass discontent with the entrenched establishments. Political upsets in Algeria, Syria, the Congo, Nigeria, Ghana and Indonesia have been some of the outstanding cases. Others less conspicuous and less internationally significant have occurred all over South America, Africa and Asia.

Each generation, it is often said, fights the wars of the preceding generation without knowing it. During the nineteenth century men died believing in the cause of royalty or republicanism. In reality, much of their sacrifice was rendered on the altar of the new nationalism. During the twentieth century men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age.

If conflict in Rhodesia or Viet Nam-or half a dozen other places-should develop in a way that makes a United Nations peacekeeping force desirable and even urgent, what would happen? Could such a force be organized? Would the Soviet Union and France try to block action if the force were created by the General Assembly? Where would the troops come from? Would they be authorized to use their weapons? Who would pay for the undertaking?

Since the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, American arms-control policy has been dominated by efforts to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons capabilities. Proposals for a non-proliferation agreement-a treaty which would prohibit signatory states not already having nuclear weapons from acquiring them-have recently been put on the table by both East and West in the form of draft treaties, but beyond that little real progress has been made. Meanwhile, the growing nuclear capability of Communist China has led a number of non-nuclear countries to reassess their strategic security positions and to ponder whether they, too, do not want to manufacture nuclear weapons. To deter them, the nuclear powers have intensified their search for something to sweeten the non-proliferation pot.

In the American effort to cope with the nuclear problems of the Alliance, one theme has been dominant: We must somehow devise for Germany "an appropriate part in the nuclear defense" of the West, as the joint communiqué of last December's Johnson-Erhard meeting put it. Due in large measure to this preoccupation, public debate about nuclear sharing within the Atlantic Alliance has left the universal impression that the central problem is how best to satisfy the German desire for further control of nuclear weapons. All but lost sight of is the crucial issue of how many and what kinds of nuclear weapons are required to defend Europe, who makes the decision to use them and how they shall be deployed.

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